


Starved

by Anonymous



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Child Abuse, Creepy Orochimaru (Naruto), Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Extremely Dubious Consent, Human Experimentation, Kabuto just wants to be loved, M/M, Pedophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:07:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22853704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Kabuto knows only the streets, until Orochimaru finds him. Then he knows only want.
Relationships: Orochimaru/Yakushi Kabuto
Comments: 19
Kudos: 50
Collections: Anonymous, Exchange Of Hell





	Starved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shabranigdo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shabranigdo/gifts).



> This work is for Shabranigdo as part of our server exchange. When I first read your prompts for what you would like and got this idea... I had no plan for this story to turn out like this and I'm sure this is far from what you expected when you gave the prompts, but this is what my dark little heart unspooled. For that I can only quote Lelo and Stitch and say of this, "I tried to give you my good looks, but let's face it, something went wrong." This... went off the rails somewhere. I have no explanation.
> 
> The only other thing I will say is, you've all read the tags. If you're still here and keep reading, that is your own business. As I warned on another of my fics, this work is dirty and unkind. Reader take warning, you proceed at your own discretion.

I was seven when he found me. Seven and alone and starving. Just another dirty unwanted running the streets of the Sound and cowering in its deserted, crumbling buildings down on its lower side, just off the banks of the Ash Creep. The polluted river that crept like a wiped dog through the lowlands. What he saw in me when I stumbled out in front of him in the road, I’ll never know. Lord Orochimaru was never one to divulge his motives.

What I remember most about that day is the hunger. The gnawing pit in the bottom of my stomach was what drove me to the other children and the market stalls, though I knew my fellow street trash would only abandon me if we were noticed. I was clumsy and slow and easily left behind, and not even children had pity on the streets. Hunger left no room for sympathy. If I had been faster, I would not have waited for the silver-haired boy with the dim eyes and tripping feet, either.

Yet, that was slim comfort when my belly was empty, my companions fled, and an adult like a landslide behind me, calling for my blood. All had gone well in the thievery, until a few of the hands had gotten too bold or, perhaps, too desperate, and the produce vendor had noticed the disappearance of his stock. The venture had disintegrated quickly from there. Little thieves scattered in all directions, but my poor eyesight condemned me. Instead of running away, I took a wrong turning and only doubled back into the arms of my infuriated pursuer.

The man caught me a striking blow that split my lip and had me tasting blood, but poor sighted or not, I was small and wily, and I slid out of his hands, to bolt in a reckless weave between stalls.

“Fucking brat! Get back here!”

The words were loud and gravely and heavy with the threat of pain if I was caught. My heart beating like a hollow drum in my thin chest, I darted, heedless, into empty space, only to fall, tripped by a stone hitting my ankle with a crack and dropping me to the dirt when my leg turned. Hot blood blossomed where the stone had connected and a throb spread up my leg, but I was already on my hands and knees, shaking my tousled head like a dog and preparing to get up and bolt again, where the second stone took me, bouncing off my shoulder and making me throw my head back and cry out.

“I’ll teach you to take from me,” a low, grumbly voice said in my ear, and a vice gripped my upper arm, pulling me half off the ground. I found myself looking up into a broad, scarred face though watering, hazed eyes. The expression on that face was stupid and unlovely, and the man held another rock in the hand not pinning me.

Almost before I could register it, he slammed the jagged thing into my shoulder and my arm went limp. I know I screamed. A high, childish scream, and I know there were other sounds around. Voices and rustlings and low curses, even jarring laughter and light, airy giggles. The noises of humans at market, not a one caring I was there. Not a single one giving a second thought to the child being wrecked in the street.

I hadn’t expected them to.

The offended merchant raised the stone again, this time aiming for my face, and I just watched impending death rush toward me. I found myself dumbly amazed when it took the man and not me.

Bloodied stone dropping from his nerveless hand, he spit blood down his chin and tumbled forward with a hole through him. A hole placed there by a merciless fist. Dazed, I clawed my way out from under the mess. There were people around me, fuzzy, indecipherable shapes I did not have the mental ability to pay attention to. Blood covered me. Blood and other things. Things which had come from the man when that fist and white-clad arm had punched through him. My own arm was numb and useless and my leg hot with pain whenever I moved it.

Yet… I was alive.

Alive when I should have been dead. At a loss, I found myself gripping my dead arm with my working hand and sitting in the road and the growing pool of blood, too stunned to move, even when a shadow fell over me. Though I should have known fear, I did not. I simply tilted my head back to look up at the man who had saved my life.

He was tall and lither and serpentine. His dark hair fell down over his shoulders in soft cascades and sharp teeth flashed when he smiled at me. Amber eyes glowed down at me, and a hand, still coated in blood, was extended to me. “What is your name, little one?” The words were low, subtle hiss, but not unsettling. Fascinated and fascinating all at once.

“Kabuto,” I answered, blinking and squinting in attempt to see him better.

“Kabuto,” he purred. “You belong to me now.”

The statement should have induced fear, but he was still smiling at me, still holding the hand he’d used to save me out to me. The sun formed a corona around him, and near blind as I was, I thought he was lovely. Hesitantly, I reached out and took the blood-slick hand he offered me.

Smile broadening, eyes flashing a deeper color, my savoir used the hand to pull me to him. He scooped me up, even while I cried out in pain at the jostling. Then I was in his arms, cradled against his shoulder with his heartbeat steady on my chest.

He was warm and his arms comforting, and he said I belonged to him, and I settled into his hold. “Good boy,” he purred again. He pressed a hand to the center of my shoulder blades, encouraging me to rest on him, then he and his entourage were moving. Carrying me away.

I flowed in and out of conciseness, but I was awake enough to know I was badly hurt, impossibly dirty, and being carried by a man his followers called Lord Orochimaru of the Sound. Young as I was, I knew who _this_ was. This was he who ruled all the Sound.

But he held me and whispered comforting things to me when I stirred and cried out. So, I stayed as still as I could and drifted, until we passed out of the sun and into the cool shade of a marble building. There Orochimaru began giving orders and commanding his retinue to disperse. I understood little but what concerned me.

“Draw a bath,” he hissed to one woman, who appeared at his side, as he strode through the hollow space. “We are filthy, and I wish to wash the boy.”

The realization I _was_ filthy and there were lice in my overlong hair and yet this pristine man was holding me, had dropped to dangle in my mind. I clutched at his shirt and dozed. Blood dripped off my fingertips to dribble a macabre trail behind us and I thought this had been happening all along. How much had I lost?

Enough to make me pliable and willing and sleepy when Orochimaru laid me down on a bed of soft cushions and began removing my clothes. I made mumbling protests and cried out when he moved my injured limbs, but I let him do what he wished. Even let him run his hands over me, examining.

Fingers following the lines of my chest, feeling my bones under my flesh, tracing my hips, parting my thighs. Hands skimming over my belly and down my thighs. “Lovely child,” he said, eyes aglow.

It burned me. All of it. His caresses leaving heated trails everywhere. But I was too tired to care, and all of his touches were light. “’Maru,” was all I moaned, and he smiled at me. A thing curling and pleased, but not kind.

My mind would not record much of what happened after. It was too dazed with pain and loss of blood and shock to render me details, but I knew Orochimaru petted me while I lay semi-conscious, moving restlessly and moaning under his touch. Then the man backed away to disrobe and scooped me up. His skin was cool and smooth along mine and he took me into the water with him. In my delirium, I thought it was a lake, but I learned soon enough over the following days, it was nothing more than a wide, deep bath sunk into the stone floor of Lord Orochimaru’s apartment. A luxuriant bath like a pool in the dessert.

The water was warm and scented with spicy things that tingled in my nose and made me even more dizzy and light-headed. Afraid of the water, I clung on his neck with my good arm and whimpered pitiful noise. Orochimaru let me hang on him, but only in so much as it didn’t interfere with him having his way. He snared a cloth from the side of the bath and used it to wash me, running the soft material over my back, torso, and limbs, while I mewed protest when the cloth came in contact with my injuries. The Lord of the Sound ignored my cries and brushed off my tears. Uncaring of the blood gathering in the water, he lathered soap in my hair, until I thought I would choke in it, and rinsed and combed my over-long tresses out.

Exhausted at the last, I sagged into him, too tired even to cry any longer. As if pleased with it all, the man hummed little, rippling bursts of satisfaction. His hand slid down my slick back, lifting me by my ass and adjusting me so his mouth slotted into the hollow space between my neck and shoulder. What he murmured into my skin before latching onto me I cannot recall. I only know they were low words of praise for my beauty, and then there were stings of pain in my throat.

I wished to cry out, to struggle, but had no energy. All I could do was shift restlessly and let my head tip to the side, so that he had better access to my tender flesh. He was biting me. Puncturing my skin with fangs like a snake’s. It hurt. Burned. I could feel his venom trickling into me on lines of fire and see the black flow of it down the veins of my arm. If I could have thrashed and screamed, I would have. Deprived of it, I cried out in my mind and fell into unconsciousness.

When I woke, I was in a white bed. It was like coming alive in a sea of foam. Sitting up, I might as well have been little more than a small, forlorn lump at the head of the bed. All was gauze, gossamer, and lace, my eyes were dim and I might as well have been crawling through a fog when I began pawing about, searching for an edge to the softness or the contours of another body in the midst of shear, fluttering curtains and silken bed cloths.

I was crying pitiably when I found an end of the yielding expanse, unexpectedly, and slipped off, to thump on the floor. Crying out, I turned back into the side of the bed and used the coverings to pull myself to my feet. It wasn’t until I was standing, swaying there, that a voice called to me.

“What are you doing, Kabuto?”

Instant and overwhelming relief took me. Lifting tear-filled eyes to Lord Orochimaru, I gripped the sheets in fists and hiccupped, “L-looking for you, ‘Maru.”

“Sweet child,” he purred, bending to pick me up and deposit me back unto the bed in a too quick motion that left me dizzy and on my hands and knees again with Orochimaru kneeling near me. “Where did you think I had gone?”

“I don’t know. I was alone and it hurts!” My hand went to my neck, cupping where he had bitten me. “Why did you?” I whimpered.

“Don’t touch it,” he hissed, swatting my hand away. “Of course, it hurts. My _chakra_ venom is a vicious substance, yet it has its purposes beyond that. You should be considering if your other injuries hurt.”

This made me waver and fall back unto my hunches. For the first time since waking, I realized I had been moving around without difficulty. I lifted the hand, which had been useless the night before and flexed it, stretching the fingers. “No. They don’t hurt.”

“You should be grateful,” he growled low, his eyes narrowing.

“I am grateful, ‘Maru,” I murmured, crawling into his chest and curling against him.

A ripple of amusement came out of him and he gathered me close, hand cupping the back of my head. “’Maru,” he purred. “No one else would dare call me such.”

“S-sorry,” I whispered.

“You may use it. I am sure it is too much to expect a child to say my name with ease.” This was offhand and testy. Then he was lifting me further and moving us both back to the center of the bed, where the blankets were rumpled form my waking. He settled us there, he with his back to the headboard and me in his lap with my head tilted to the side. “Now, my lovely, I will give you more. It will make you strong.”

I shivered at the words, but just clung to his shirt. Smiling his sharp-toothed curl of the lips, his eyes unfocused, and he lowered his face to my neck. This time I did cry out. Though I tried to cling to him and be still, I writhed and struggled, until the burning immobilized me, and I fell limp.

When I hung there in his arms, Orochimaru eased us into the softness of the bed and covered us both with the blankets. It wasn’t long before unconsciousness claimed me with the sweet release of painlessness.

I opened my eyes next to crystal daylight. The sun was emptying itself into the room and bathing me, as I lay in Orochimaru’s arms. He hadn’t left me this time and I was glad. I was able to snuggle into him for a few moments before he woke, smiled his unpleasant smile at me, and commanded we both should bathe.

This was not quick. The Lord of the Sound took his time with me, and I submitted to his tender and forceful handling with a strong desire to please. The man really was lovely, and I wanted to see him smile again.

Still, it was a relief when he’d had his fill of me and allowed us both to emerge from the water. He took his time drying me with the soft folds of a towel, then called for servants. They measured me and dressed me in shimmery satin that was intentionally too long for me. It slipped and slid over my skin. I tugged at the sleeves and tripped over the hems of the robe and into my lord’s arms.

“Are you having difficulties with your new attire?” he purred, righting me.

“No, ‘Maru,” I said, looking up at him. Squinting to bring his face into focus. “I just can’t see well.”

He frowned at this, catching my chin in his fingers, so he could study my face. “Your eyes are poor.”

“Yes,” I said in simple agreement. As it had never been any other way, it did not seem an important thing. But Orochimaru thought differently. He called for other servants who examined my eyes and said things to my lord I did not understand. But, in a few hours, they brought me some wire wrapped pieces of glass they settled on my face.

And, for the first time in my life, I saw the world clearly. The brightness and sharpness of it all. And my lord’s face. I saw it and I reached out to touch it, unthinkingly. My small hands tracing his features.

“Thank you, ‘Maru,” I whispered.

“Silly child,” was his only response.

Yet, this wasn’t the end of his gifts. When we returned to his room, he showed me a gilded cage near the window. A small bird sat perched inside, its head hunched into its wings. I pondered it. The creature seemed dejected, its feathers ruffled, as if for comfort.

“You need something to accompany you here,” my lord offered. But said nothing more.

† † †

To say I loved or hated the Lord of the Sound would have been a pale description of what I felt in regard to the man who possessed me. I both worshiped and despised him in equal measures. He was my god, my existence, my all. The center and the gravity, which bound me to it. I could no more have escaped him than I could draw from him the thing I craved more than life itself.

And I detested myself for this fact most of all.

These feelings grew on me little by little with the passing years. In the beginning, I thought little of such things. I only knew I was off the streets, my stomach was full, I was warm and clean, and if the Lord Orochimaru bit me every night, it was still better than being alone and unwanted.

But even then, I felt something to be awry. I was used to being alone, but my lord never let me out of his sight after bringing me to his house. Wherever he was, I must be, par force. This seemed like a little thing, but it was hard to bear. More so because in our wandering the streets of the Sound, it was clear to me even the children of the other great lords were allowed some freedom and space to do as they pleased. While I must forever be within reach of Orochimaru’s hand.

I stood it, though. Took it without complaint because he was my savior. The one who held me by night.

Other things were more difficult to endure.

I was nine when he first inserted his _chakra_ into me. He said it was like his venom and would enhance my abilities with the _ninjutsu_ he was instructing me in. I believed him because I knew he only did things that served his purposes and my being strong was one of his purposes.

This did not change the fact the act hurt like all the hells I’d ever heard tell of. I screamed myself hoarse, then merely thrashed on our bed, until I lost consciousness. The next time was no different. And yet… I didn’t mind it. My lord was fond of putting things inside me.

His tongue especially, when I was young. Those first few years he probed the thing into my mouth near nightly, while he held me in preparation to bite me. He enjoyed it when I reciprocated, and so I did.

My lord’s fingers were other things he seemed to take pleasure putting into me. Into my mouth at first, but near the time he began infusing me with _chakra_ , he started putting them other places as well. In our bed, tucked to his chest with my legs spread wide around his waist, he had me suck them, then, grinning while I caught my breath, he reached behind me and inserted them into my nether regions.

It was strange and unexpected, and I fell gasping and shuddering against him as he worked the fingers in and out. Yet, I made no protest. I never did. Only attempted to absorb each new occurrence.

Overall, I much preferred my lord’s member in my mouth compared to his fingers in my posterior. It was more of a difficulty but made me feel less strange.

I was ten when this first occurred. Orochimaru was kissing me. We were both panting, then he pulled my head back by the hair, looked at me oddly with narrowed eyes, and lowered my head between his legs and encouraged me to take what I found there. My mouth was too small, and saliva dribbled from the corners of my lips, but it was alright. He was soft and velvety against my tongue and tasted of the oils he scented our bath water of. All that threw me was the rush of salt at the end. Still, I swallowed it and looked up at him with dreamy eyes.

“Good boy,” he cooed and drew me close to sleep.

All of me belonged to him. I gave him everything. Allowed him anything.

And yet… He offered me nothing in return. I wanted only his affection and he gave me none. Where I desired simple looks of love, he extended only gazes of lecherous greed.

Perhaps it was this that first lit the sparks of rage in me. This unsated hunger, which fanned the embers to life and crackling heat.

Perhaps.

I only knew a deadly and quiet fury grew in me behind my eyes, which required glass to see.

This inferno lay hidden and dormant for some time, though. It would take other things to unveil it.

I was twelve when Orochimaru first introduced me to his experiments. He woke me in the night, a rare night where he had sent me to bed untouched and alone and he remained awake by light of a small lamp. I was befuddled and stumbling, but I dressed and followed him down and down and down into the uttermost foundations of his keep.

There, behind metal doors as thick as gravestone slabs, were rooms upon rooms of things which should have sent a child screaming. Bodies on tables. Bodies in cages. Bodies floating in liquid, behind glass, with thin wires extending from them. Dead, but somehow, inexplicably alive. They were all alive, and many were screaming. Screaming as I should have been.

But I was not screaming. My expression was neutral and my eyes contemplative behind my glasses. Clinical. Analytical. All of the things Orochimaru had taught me to be in the preceding years. And the fact of it had the Lord of the Sound smiling at me. His grin sly and pleased and sharp-toothed. His eyes narrowed and cunning.

His grin persisted, until we reached a room with an empty table and he waved me toward it. “This is yours, Kabuto.”

“Mine?” I asked, stopping and eyeing the bare table.

“Are you concerned with my other experiments, my Kabuto?” he purred. “You shouldn’t be. You aren’t like my other endeavors.”

I was silent, looking at his sly expression. His statement had as much as said I was an experiment. Yet, I believed him when he said I was not the same as the ones we’d passed to reach this metal and stone room. He kept none of them near him. He took none of them to his bed.

“I’m not concerned,” I said finally.

“Then lie down. I am going to give you my power, at last.”

I did as asked, laying there, unresisting, as he and whatever assistants he’d brought with us strung me with tubes and IVs and secured restraints on my wrists and ankles.

“To obtain power, one must pass through discomfort,” the man I belonged to cajoled. “I have given you the strength you need to endure with my venom and _chakra_. Now I will complete you and make you worthy of being mine.”

All of it should have made me fearful, should have reduced me weeping. But I only lay still with a throbbing heart because this was my god, my idol. If he required this, I would give it. Even when the burning fluids flowed into my veins and seared me to my core, rendering me nothing but a writhing thing, I took it as one imparted a boon.

Still, it left me insentient for a length of time I could not measure. When at last I came back to myself my muscles were limp and loose in that way which said they had been tight and contorted and overworked for some time, and my skin felt stretched and dry. I shifted tired eyes to Orochimaru, and he smiled at me.

“I knew you would survive, my Kabuto,” he cooed, then reached a hand to me. “Come, see what I’ve given you.”

It was difficult to stand, but my Lord of the Sound helped me. He wrapped one of his arms around my waist and held me up, while I stumbled with him to a full-length mirror. The light was dim and the reflective surface shadowed, but I could see my naked form supported by him. I was thin, as ever, but my long, white hair had gone lank and my skin a pale, pasty texture. Cracks seemed to limn my flesh, rendering it almost scaly, and my eyes were silted and amber behind the glass of my lenses.

I looked much as Orochimaru did.

“See how beautiful you are,” he purred, pleasure evident in the curve of his lips. “My Kabuto.”

Beautiful was not how I would describe myself, but if the man I belonged to thought so, I would bear it. Without responding, I glanced up at him.

He chuckled. His ever-present avarice grin split his lips. His hand slipped over my buttock, but he did nothing else, as we stood there in front of the mirror.

Not then.

I was thirteen when he first truly claimed me as his own.

After the experiment, I cut my hair and took to wearing a red, hooded robe. The sun was painful on my skin and eyes, even if my ability to use _chakra_ and _ninjutsu_ had increased seven-fold. Sacrifices. Things given over to Orochimaru I thought as little of as I did of his calling me to our bed that day. I just went without complaint.

Orochimaru threw me unto the bed and pushed off my robe. I thought I knew what he was about, but he surprised me. His fingers in me, stretching me and making me moan were known, not unusual. His opposite hand over my skin and hardening nipples the same. Him taking himself in hand, aligning his member with me, and pushing in was not.

The sudden thrust of it made me groan and clench around him, but this only had little, pleasured sounds coming out of him, and incited him to move in me at a rapid pace. Maneuvering one of my legs up, until it was nearly bent enough to touch my belly, he did as he desired. My eyes were unfocused with the new sensations when his free hand found me and began caressing me in ways that had me aching and begging for things I didn’t even know. I thought I was coming undone, and then I did. The force of release so blinding I was still laying, stunned when Orochimaru left me to dress.

What had happened escaped me, but I was curious and thoughtful. When I finally did get up, I ventured to the sunken bath in another part of our room, to wash away the tacky fluids we’d both left behind. Naked, standing just above the water line, I examined myself. I had not really thought of such things or wondered why my lord played with me as he did before. But hand moving down to touch myself, I contemplated if that thing I’d experienced was why.

My hand stroking over myself, the sensations rose again, and I did not realize I was bringing myself back to that pinnacle point until it was done, and I was gasping against the edge of the bath, gripping the stone for support.

Orochimaru chuckled above me, and I turned my head up to find him there. Watching me. “Do you like it?” he queried, eyes narrow.

Silent, contemplative still, I walked toward him through the water and reached a hand up to him, inviting him into the bath with me. He accepted it and slid with grace into the water. With him there, I walked into him and put my hands on him. He hissed in a breath, then drew me into his lap. Before I knew it, I was riding him and gasping into his neck, while he laughed little, breathless sounds and worked a finger into me, alongside his cock, allowing me to fuck myself with both.

When it was done, I was spent and helpless in his hands and he whispered in my ear, “You are truly mine now, Kabuto. No one else will ever have you like this.”

Nor would I have wanted them too. I wanted only him. _Needed_ only him. And was ever thwarted in my desire. The more we were intimate, the more I experienced him as _mine_ alone, the more I realized a gnawing hunger growing in me beside my rage. A thing ever unsatisfied.

For long periods of time, I would take to sitting beside the bird he had given me and watching it flitter and bite uselessly at its bars. I could not understand why, until I coolly realized it wanted out. Out into the air. It was not free. It was mine and I was his. I was Orochimaru’s caged bird and also denied what I wanted.

Denied it even as I learned I was abused. Claimed and more than ever possessed by the man I belonged to.

This realization came because he at last let roam the streets alone. Once, I came upon a man having a woman in an ally. Interested and not shy, I paused to watch, only to be scolded.

“Beat it, kid! This isn’t something you should be seeing.”

The woman giggled at me. Face smiling, tongue flicking over her lips with tempting delight. “Not for children,” she agreed.

Coldly infuriated, I killed the man like Orochimaru had once killed a merchant beating me, with an arm through his chest. Then I picked up the woman by the hair with my bloodied hand and asked, “Why isn’t this something a child should see?”

She was sobbing, _seeing me_ for who and what I was, at last, now she could see under my hood. “It isn’t something children should know!” she choked out past her tears. The slide of them cutting tracks through the blood on her face. “You’re too young!”

“Am I?” I inquired and rejoined her with the man I’d separated her from. It was messy, the killing, but I didn’t mind it. My rage was working in me. So, here was yet another thing in which I was treated other than how a child should be. That it should be in the very thing which bound me to the man from whom I hungered only made it worse. I _wanted_ of him, as I had once wanted for food. I was had, but not given the one, mysterious thing I yearned for in turn.

I was fourteen when I truly understood the depth and simplicity of what it was. My Lord of the Sound had instructed me to take part in his experiments, once he had changed me to become more like him. A year after he claimed me, he gave me my first specimen of my own. It was a woman we had seen on the street. My lord had taken me walking with him, but I had lagged behind, then faltered altogether.

A man and woman stood in the sun. They did nothing really, but the woman laughed, and her companion looked at her… That hidden, voiceless rage of mine spiked and perhaps my lord caught some hint of it. “Would you like her?” he purred, suddenly above me.

I glanced up and back down. “Yes.”

In all reality, I wanted them both. In Orochimaru’s laboratory, beneath his house, I hung the male on the wall and made him watch what I did to the female. At least, until his sobbing and begging annoyed me. Then I killed him and continued my work. The female grew tired of screaming before I took her tongue out, but even then, she articulated low, gauging sounds. She was still, miraculously, alive when Orochimaru came to me. He glanced between the two, the dead one on the wall and the unrecognizable, twitching flesh on the table.

“Such a waste,” he purred. “Why did you do this, Kabuto?”

“I wanted to see her,” I returned.

“See her?” he replied.

“On the inside.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Such a strange boy.”

I looked at him with my cool eyes and moved toward him, stocking the man, as he so often did me. When I reached him, I put my hands on his cock and stretched up to kiss him. That was all it took.

With a low growl against my lips, he hoisted me onto an empty table and pushed my robe up to bunch over my hips. Not to be outdone, I fumbled open his pants and wrapped my fingers around his member. He hissed with pleasure at the contact, even as he jammed two fingers into me, to prep me. Then he was slapping my hands aside, and inserting himself into me, his hands hard on my thighs, forcing my legs so far apart I felt they would crack, my joints split from the tension. The blood that had been on my hands was a strange lube between us, within me, and my thoughts went rampant in tune with each thrust into me.

_I want you, want you, want you! Why won’t you look at me the way he looked at her?!_

Ultimately, this was the source of my anger and the thing I wanted of Orochimaru, and I couldn’t hide it from myself. I simply did carve his affection and received none. Though he claimed me time after time, he gave me nothing I required in return. And the hollowness of it left me enraged.

But more, it left me lonely. Infinitely so. I was his caged bird. I belonged only to him, wanted only him, and was not wanted in turn.

I was also fourteen when the first assassins appeared. Perhaps the people of the Sound had grown tired of a lord who went down among them, only to take what he desired without recompense. It mattered little, the reasoning. The assassins came one after another, and I thought of them little. Each was dispatched well before they reached Orochimaru, and I was consumed with the man I belonged to and the lack I felt within myself.

The whole of my emptiness seemed to be summed into culmination by the death of the bird he had given me. One day, I entered our room to find it laying stiff in the bottom of its cage. Its eyes half-lidded and filmed, its tongue lulling dry from its beak, its feathers mottled and unordered. One clawed foot clasped a bar in a death grip, as if it had grasped for freedom with its last, pulsing heartbeat.

I merely stood still and cast my eyes over the cage with cool appraisal, as emotionless as the glass hooding my gaze. I had little doubt its fate would be mine. It was my bird and I was Orochimaru’s. I’d borne my pet as little love as he bore me.

Stolid, I turned my back on it.

I was fifteen when the assassin got past Orochimaru’s defenses. We were in our room, dressing after a time of panting on the bed. The length of my cloak fastened around me, I paced to the balcony to peer into the moonlight. Unlike the light of day, this silver sheen did not burn me, and I let my hood down. My hair was sweat dampened and hung lank, as it had the day Orochimaru found me.

I don’t know how long I stood there, I only know I saw a shift of movement at the side of my eye and reacted to it. I was between Orochimaru and the blade when it swung down, opening me from collar to sternum.

My lips parted but I made no sound, as I fell. Blood trailed out of my lips and my eyes traced the man I belonged to, his mouth curled and hard.

_Will… you not look at me with affection… Just once…_


End file.
